Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. I had the opportunity to read through the documentation prior the meeting. I was held up at a meeting in my constituency. The witnesses are all very welcome. The ongoing engagement is really important.

We have touched on health literacy, something that the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Skills has examined in terms of educational outcomes for vulnerable groups. Representatives of the Traveller community took part in that. In about three weeks time we will also look at issues relating to literacy.

We will include health literacy in that, as opposed to just literacy. That is really important. It was really positive to see from the submissions that the Traveller community has workers working so well within the community. They said it was hard to recruit the Traveller health workers although they seem to be doing a really good job. It was very interesting to see that number of Traveller women going for BreastCheck and the test for cervical cancer is far higher than the number in the settled community. Are there lessons to be learned from that about how it was possible to encourage women to go for these important tests that we all need to do? Are there lessons to be applied to other aspects of Traveller health to encourage them to get involved? I take the point that there was more success in respect of Traveller women's health and those lessons need to be applied to the men.